Why “sassy” just doesn’t go over very well with black folks

In her Newsweek piece “No Apologies,” Raina Kelley asks her white fellow journalists to loosen up a bit and not be so afraid of being perceived as racist when discussing the Obamas.

For the most part I agree with Kelley, but I think she misses the mark with this paragraph (emphasis mine):

I know there are plenty of Internet sheriffs trolling the airwaves for the next Imus-style outrage. Ignore them. Of course, if you send an e-mail cartoon depicting the front lawn of the White House as a watermelon patch, as the mayor of Los Alamitos, Calif., did last week, you’re on your own. But there is simply nothing racist about saying that adorable little Sasha Obama is “sassy.” The Huffington Post got clobbered for pointing out a “sassy” pair of sunglasses the president’s daughter was sporting. You know, cute, sporty, fresh.

Here’s the thing though: “sassy” is a loaded word with a particular history among black people — especially older black people — that makes it an inappropriate choice when discussing the Obama girls.

If you had asked me two months ago, I probably would have agreed with Kelley. I worshipped at the temple of Sassy magazine in the early-to-mid 1990s. To this day, I consider it “The Greatest F*cking Teen Magazine EVAR!!!” — at least while it was under Jane Pratt’s leadership.

So “sassy” to me always meant fresh, different, distinctively smart and stylish , perhaps even precocious. I have full faith that this is what most (white) writers mean when they describe Sasha Obama as “sassy.”

Then I had a conversation with my 65-year-old mother. You see, back in her day, and I suspect for many black people still, “sassy,” does not mean “cute, sporty, fresh.” “Sassy” does not mean “smart” or “stylish” either. To black folks, “sassy” means “too grown,” — alternatives might be “fast,” “smart-mouthed,” or “hussy.”

But the meaning of “sassy” that make many black people say “Oh HELL to the NAW” — and this is critical — is “stepping out of her place.”

Do you feel me? Anything that suggests black folks have a place and should stay in it just ain’t going over very well with Negroes in the new millennium. And a word that suggests that a little girl was acting out of turn when she is actually well-behaved, albeit extroverted? Yeah, that will rankle a few folks.

In that context, calling Sasha “sassy” is a reminder of our collective cultural tendency to label black behavior as different, exceptional, and worse than white behavior. For example: the violence rappers say versus the realistic violence movies show.*

Plus, “sassy black woman” is so cliched. It is a word that conjures up the finga snappin’, neck rollin’, LOUD-MOUTHED, funky attitude having archetype that so many black women don’t fit and/or actively resist. It’s an insulting stereotype.

“Sassy” then is a word much like “uppity.” It’s coded language that is often used to demean or dismiss black women, particularly (though not always and not exclusively) when used by a white person.

It’s also a word, much like “trifling,” that carries two different meanings depending on the community and audience among whom it’s used. For Kelley, who is black, to say “there is simply nothing racist” about the word “sassy” ignores a history, a context, and a definition that dictionaries just don’t reflect.

UPDATE: Huffington Post Keeps Referring to Sasha Obama as “SASSY” offers some extra insight into this debate.

* As Jay-Z put it “Scarface the movie / did more than Scarface the rapper to me.”